Izaak Michell is one of the top Australian competitors around, but he was one of a handful of elite grapplers who were noticeably absent from CJI 2. Obviously there was only a finite number of spaces available, as there were 8 team of 5 grapplers featured in the event. That meant that a number of top competitors from teams who weren’t represented were left out, but Michell is actually a member of New Wave Jiu-Jitsu and now Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu. What made his omission even more interesting was the fact that New Wave actually had to shuffle their team around prior to the event and ended up inviting Vagner Rocha as a wildcard at under 88kg, where Michell normally competes.
Vagner Rocha had a much deeper run all the way to the final at ADCC 2024 and has beaten Michell in their only direct match at ADCC 2022, but the choice to go outside of their ranks was still an interesting one. It wasn’t without precedent though, as New Wave also brought in Mica Galvao at under 77kg despite the fact that they have multiple top competitors capable of making that weight limit. That wasn’t Michell’s only potential opportunity to compete at CJI 2 of course, but he did not make the Team Misfits Australasia lineup and was not brought in as a wildcard by any of the other 6 teams.
Michell has now explained that he was never invited to the Australasian team, presumably because Lucas Kanard filled his weight class at under 88kg as soon as the team was announced. He apparently was invited to represent New Wave by head coach John Danaher and Gordon Ryan though, and he claims that he was ‘blocked’ from competing. Michell doesn’t specifically name who prevented him from representing the team, but Ryan actually already accused Craig Jones specifically of denying Michell a spot at the event. Michell does still train under Danaher at Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu though, and he’ll be back to representing them in competition at some point soon.
Izaak Michell revealed that he was blocked from competing at CJI 2 in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
